Bruges, Antwerp, PARIS

Alright, so the past week has definitely been an eventful one! We went on a couple day trips with friends and spent the next weekend in Paris!
So our friend Aytaj just moved down the street from us so we can hang out more! She also has a boyfriend/almost fiance. His name is Daniel and he is awesome. He came down from Denmark to visit for a week. So for Aytaj's birthday we visited Bruges together (Daniel has a car! :D) we saw sights, a couple of old churches, we bought some DELICIOUS truffles, seriously they were to die for! and we went to dinner at an Argentine steak house, and it was great! 
The next day we took a day trip to Antwerp! It was pretty similar to the Bruges trip, saw some churches, ate some awesome food, did some shopping. Antwerp had this beautiful pier though! We walked all over downtown and everything was awesome!
The rest of the week was spent hanging out with Daniel and Aytaj. Daniel apparently loves the english language and the United States so we talked a lot about that, we watched a lot of movies and ate some awesome food that Aytaj cooked! It was a great weekend! Then of Friday we left for Paris! 
So we took the MegaBus to Paris (same bus as the one to Amsterdam) and we got there at about noon-ish. We were planning on taking the Metro to our hotel then exploring from there but we got sidetracked and ended up walking the whole way (which took like 3-4 hours) But we saw the giant arch thing and ran into an awesome Christmas market and other shopping places, we saw a couple stores with like shoes that were about $2600... they were beautiful... :) Lots of shopping downtown, but nothing that we could afford obviously haha. We saw the big Ferris Wheel there and the Eiffel tower from a distance as we walked. We found that bridge that everyone puts locks on and WE PUT A LOCK ON IT :D it was awesome, I have some pictures. Our hotel was in an awesome location, it was fairly downtown, very close to Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and Luxembourg Gardens. We got to our hotel at like 6 PM and rested for a bit, Our hotel was alright, nice place, you had to pay extra for showers and the showers and toilets are shared, luckily we had a toilet right outside of our (small) room. But, after we rested we went out and explored around our hotel and got some food and that was about it for the first day, oh and it was raining like all day. On Saturday we decided to Visit the Gardens, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel tower because it wasn't supposed to rain. So we went to the gardens first and it was awesome, it was huge and beautiful and there were a ton of people and activities going on. The Notre Dame Cathedral was amazing, it is huge! and a huge line to get into the place! It was so beautiful though! We saw a mime of sorts! Then we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower and it was phenomenal! Way prettier than I thought it would be! And bigger of course! We wanted to see it when it got dark so we took a cruise on La Seine ( I don't know if it's a river or a canal). The cruise went past all the main tourist attractions and had a cool commentary so we learned some of the history of the amazing things we saw! It was great! We were walking and I saw something sparkle in the reflection of a building's window, and of course it caught my attention. After a minute I realized that it must be the Eiffel Tower, so we tried to get out of the tangle of building to get a look at it, saw another sparkling glimpse, then when we finally broke free of the buildings it had stopped sparkling and I was sad, BUT then Nathan looked it up and found that it sparkles every hour! So we decided to have dinner and see it sparkle again. Then we had dinner at a traditional french restaurant and had the best chicken I think I have ever had! Ate a Baguette! (Paid $5.50 for a tiny glass of coke!) We definitely passed on the escargots ;) Then after dinner we saw the Eiffel Tower SPARKLE and it was made for me, I just know it :D oh, I was so happy! haha. Then Sunday came and we spent the majority of the day discovering the wonders of The Grand Louvre! We took quite a few pictures. I think we decided that Nathan's favorite piece was Cupid and Psyche, a sculpture. and my favorite was the Winged Victory (Nike), also a sculpture. That place was so big and there were so many things! We picked out a few things we for sure wanted to see, then just wandered the rest of the time. Of course we saw the Famous Monna Lisa. Though she was quite hard to see through the crowd! We saw Venus de Milo, lots of chandeliers, Egyptian, and Greek artifacts, just a ton of everything! We really loved the sculptures though! and some paintings! There was a mall underground next to the Louvre that we mozied through, got some McDonald's in Paris :D Oh and there are a million souvenir shops that all sell the same thing for basically the same prices and it was ridiculous! haha but I found an awesome scarf that I love! :D I will post pictures on facebook of our adventure. But that was about it! It was amazing! I didn't want to leave! We could spend weeks in Paris and not see everything! But this upcoming weekend we are going to go to the chocolate factory here Brussels and then we are going to Germany! Specifically Aachen's Christmas Market! :D